


Sharp as Glass

by Starla-Nell (Princess_Nell)



Category: Dragon Age II
Genre: Cannibalism, F/F, Horror, I suppose it half-counts, Mermaids au, but Merrill is still a sweetheart, elves as mermaids, except for eating people, if mermaids eating drowned humans counts, it got weird, just the top half, mer!Merrill, mermaids as monsters, non-sexual pet play discussion, non-sexual recreational drug use discussion, suicidally-careless!Hawke
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-19
Updated: 2017-07-19
Packaged: 2018-12-04 02:21:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,157
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11545449
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Princess_Nell/pseuds/Starla-Nell
Summary: I press my face against the crystal-clear glass, because I know what they’ll do.Hawke visits the Alienage Aquarium every day, except when she climbs the Wounded Coast, seeking wild mermaids. One day, she finds one.





	Sharp as Glass

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Claudia_bm](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Claudia_bm/gifts).



> Written to fill a prompt for a Hawke/Merrill Mermaid AU, where mermaids are dangerous.   
> _Falling in love with human doesn't change the fact that they're kind of a predator… I always like the idea of mermaid being dangerous more than them being harmless sea creatures… They lure sailors to their death by causing shipwrecks._   
>  I checked several types of mermaids and settled on merrows, which are basically Irish sirens. I made a few changes. My biggest was to erase the strict division of merrows’ attributes by gender, which was an addition of later writers, not in the original folklore. I also added colors for the ‘domesticated’ merrows.   
> I’ve had the concept of an innocent monster brewing in the back of my brain for a while, so this prompt got darker than anyone could have predicted. In other words, no, I did not plan to make elves into mermaids into cannibals.   
> Enjoy!

I press my face against the crystal-clear glass, because I know what they’ll do.

Red and orange, yellow and cobalt blue scales cover their bodies from the end of their tails to halfway up their necks. Their brilliant green or red hair floats out like seaweed from a rock, waving in the current of their movements. All odd, but merrow faces are eerie. They have human skin tones, human features. They smile, though, and their teeth are pointed and cruel. The first presses taunting thin scaled fingers against the glass over my fingers. It laughs in its underwater way, gills flaring along not-necks. Another presses to the glass next to its companion. A third hangs back, this one purple and indigo with black hair, beckoning with long crooked fingers: come here, little girl.

I’m not a little girl. I’ve faced darkspawn and a dragon and the darkness in human souls and I’m fine, ask anyone. But I look into their hungry whiteless eyes and press against the safety of the glass. One of them licks its lips hungrily and there it is, the fear and longing. There’s a sour tinge in the back of my throat.

I give them what they want, it’s only fair. I cover my fear badly, push away from the glass, and walk through the damp halls of the Alienage Aquarium, away from their silent laughing gills without looking back. The scents of wet salt and mildew stalk me, accompanied by that taste of bile. Everyone can visit the Alienage free on Sundays, for the socialization of the creatures, so there’s a wide mix of people, but no one cares as I push between couples on dates, elaborate nobles focused on each other, children being loud and easy to run over. They peer and smile and laugh at how humanoid merrows are, and they walk on. They come casually, for the entertainment. I come because I must. I'm drawn by merrows like a compulsion in my blood.

###

Probably every town has an Alienage Aquarium. Father used to take the twins and me to the tiny Lothering one, a single tank with algae problems, and we’d seen others. The merrows were simply pretty and strange in Ferelden. I used their lore to scare Carver, and we dared each other to touch the glass for five seconds, ten seconds, a full minute.

Then outside Kirkwall a few months ago, while Bethany and I were working off our uncle's debt along the Wounded Coast, there was a fin in the water, a silver one. No one else saw, but I asked what it was anyway. The leader of our squad shrugged and said, "Probably a wild merrow."

It was a breath of life. The next Sunday, I went to the Kirkwall Alienage. Father and Carver were dead, Bethany disinterested. The scales of the fish-people were more vibrant than anything I'd seen in Ferelden. That first day, I stared for hours. They noticed, became curious, and scared me off.

###

I climb the Wounded Coast rocks after helping Varric’s crew clear out the bandits and marauders.

The rocks are the color and consistency of pressed sand. If I walk the edges, the rocks crumble and splash. I leave a crumb-trail of water droplets below, heart lurching.

The sky is rose wine: sweet and subtle but vivid pink. It streaks the sky, and everything is glowing. The waves here break the sandstone. In the year I’ve been here, I haven’t seen more than my own fumbling destruction, yet just under the water’s surface is evidence of centuries of erosion in littered boulders along the coast.

The water far below is clear as glass, the bottom the green of sea foam. Shipwrecks trace the shelf before the bottom plunges toward the depths. Unwary ships are drawn here by shattered columns of rock… or is it something more?

Steel isn’t the color of waves or tank-fins or sunset but the color of a splash, then a streak of shadow moving underwater faster than running, faster than ships or the lazy fish along this sheltered coast. I clamber to the path, run parallel to the coast, keep an eye on the shadow, nearly tumble off the cliff, lose the shadow!… find it while my feet run and my palms sting.

It darts around a precipice. The path climbs from here. Faster to go around the bottom, even my boots get wet. I clamber down the stone cliff and discover the sandstone has been undercut here.

The sea carved an alcove into the broad cliff. The stone changes texture at the top, revealing a stronger stone protecting the height from washing into the Waking Sea with the rest.

It’s deep here, but I can see bottom. Years or centuries ago, a piece of the strong upper stone fell off, sheltering this shallow cove. I find the renegade shadow under glass-clear water, but it’s a woman now, enamored with a mirror that is dark and bright at the same time. She’s not vain: it’s not reflecting her. It’s not reflecting any image. It’s a twist of wrongness against the plain stone. I wonder how she found a place to set it among the boulders of sandstone littering the bottom, or if it’s always been there.

Her scales are steel grey covered with a forest green garment down her back, hood pulled up, open at the sides and belted with leather above her tail. She’s pulled a lock of short matching green hair from under the hood, caught between her fingertips, twisting. She’s lithe and has thin, beige webbing connecting her long fingers. They aren’t supposed to be beautiful unless they’re singing.

I toss one piece of sandstone, two, five, but they crumble and slide in my grip. The water-woman chews her nail and stares at her unreflective mirror. I find a chunk of rhyolite, fallen from the stone cap above. I aim carefully. It splashes, falls, falls, taps the finned beauty on the shoulder. She turns. I wave? She smiles with all her teeth. There. Is. No. Glass.

This is the dread I find in the Alienage Aquarium, or when a particularly large rock crumbles into the sea from under me, but I’m not in control. To escape I must run now. No, I have my knives. The wild creature is a streak in the water. I back up a step. Her head breaks the surface, gills flattening against her neck, hair and hood plastered to her head. Her garment covers her front, too. Unlike the Alienage merrows, she has fine scale lines on her face, framing her eyes and face in steel-grey patterns.

“Hello! What’re you doing here?”

_She spoke! They can speak?_

“I thought I was alone. You were”—she waves down the coast—“off climbing the rocks.”

Manners before my silence gets rude: “I followed you. Shouldn’t I have? I can go if you want.”

The water-woman ducks below the glass, gills flaring and flattening several times before she emerges to say, “It’s fine. I’d quite like if you could stay. I’m Merrill, by the way.” Her smile is as toothy and sharp as the Alienage creatures, but her eyes aren’t hungry. They’re pained, maybe lonely.

“I’m Tahlia Hawke, Hawke to most everyone. It’s delightful to meet you.” I’m smiling. I don’t smile anymore because it’s uncomfortable.

“You’re usually with others,” Merrill says, “fighting your kind. Not your friends, of course. The ones who hide between rocks.” She ducks under water before I can answer. Her gills flare once and she resurfaces.

I’m looming over her. I sit on a rock… out of the merrow’s reach.

“Those are bandits. They may be human, but they’re not my kind.”

“Bandits steal valuables, don’t they? Fighting them must be very exciting.”

“Yes, they kill people for the valuables.” _Why do I need to explain my reasons for killing to this creature? Person?_ She keeps ducking underwater, but I notice less.

“That doesn’t seem particularly nice, does it?”

I laugh at that. “No, it’s not nice. That’s why we kill them back. Varric—that’s the short one—makes arrangements for us to clear them out.”

“I’ve seen you fight,” Merrill says, and I feel my cheeks warm. “You’re wonderful.”

I shake my head and then nod. “I can fight,” I say.

“But?” Merrill prompts.

I laugh nervously. “Are all fish-people this perceptive?”

“We’re called merrows, Hawke,” she replies seriously. “I’m guessing you wouldn’t really like it if I called you ‘goat-people’.”

I laugh too loud and say, “No, I guess I wouldn’t.” Laughing too loud is one of my strengths. “Well, I wouldn’t complain if you call bandits ‘goat-people’.”

“Oh, but you’re a much better goat than them!” Merrill exclaims. “You never fall in. Why do you climb the cliffs alone?”

“Because others yell at me to stay on the path.”

“Then maybe you should stay on the path. I’ve seen what falling does to bandits.”

“I’m quick,” I dodge. “I haven’t fallen yet.”

“But you could. When the bandits fall, we take them, you know.” Merrill says it matter-of-factly: “We put them in a larder and have them for feast days.”

It’s cold in the shady alcove. “That’s really disconcerting,” I say, though I suspect she knows it.

Merrill smiles toothily. “I thought bandits weren’t your kind?”

“I won’t _eat_ them. They’re still _people._ ”

“Well, you eat goats and fish, don’t you?”

“Um, sometimes.”

“Do you kill them without eating them?”

“No, why would I do that?”

“It would be wasteful, wouldn’t it?” she says reasonably.

“It’s not the same,” I object.

“You shouldn’t be so surprised when my clan eats your goat-people.” She is grinning, as if she’s made a pun. As if she hasn’t tried to make bandits as edible as goat meat.

“I’m not about to eat merrows,” I say, but I swallow nervously. “Are you going to eat me?”

“I don’t think so,” Merrill says. “You’re awfully cute,” she says, and I remember Bethany’s piglet when we were kids. Mother sold it when it got too big to sleep in Bethany’s room, and Bethany only forgave her in the wake of Carver’s death a year ago.

I force a laugh. “That’s a relief. I’d hate to be dragged to your larder.”

“I’d hate to fight you,” Merrill says solemnly. “Which brings us full circle, doesn’t it? You are a good fighter, but?”

I shrug and say, “I’m nothing else, really. I have quick daggers and I dodge well, but I’m not special.”

“That’s not true!” Merrill says. “You know where you are, you notice things others miss. You’re very sure of your body.”

“I’m… Are the bandits alive when you take them?” The question to comes out unexpectedly; I wish I’d kept it quashed.

“Some of them. But we don’t drown them! We keep them in really nice air chambers near the kelp beds. They are well-fed and happy until feast day.” Merrill tells me this reassuringly, as if everything before isn’t wiped out by the words ‘feast day’.

Dread and anticipation roil in my gut as I ask, “How do you make sure they’re happy?”

Merrill grins, delighted. “Do you want me to show you? Oh, but I should have an air chamber so I can take care of you if you need it. You won’t care about anything, you know, not even eating. I can get one tomorrow. I could bring it here and work on the mirror while you’re being happy. You will smile so much!” She claps her hands, and the sound echoes off the stone shell. Her eyes dance with promise and joy for the idea. As she breathes, I remember tales of merrow poisons and how they’re administered and suddenly I cannot stop imagining Merrill’s lips against mine. I could be taken deeper in the air chamber in a drug-induced bliss, kept as Merrill’s willing pet until someone serves me with a side of kelp.

“I… I can’t tomorrow,” I lie. I walk the Coast or the Alienage every day, with or without Varric’s crew. _Who would even notice? Who would care? Mother and Bethany, perhaps, but they have each other. Gamlen wouldn’t give a fig. Varric can find another fighter to replace me for the Deep Roads._ I wonder when the next feast day is. “But next week? On Monday?” I add then wonder how they track days underwater.

“What day is it?” Merrill asks patiently.

“Thursday,” I say, meek.

Merrill thinks quickly, perhaps assessing her busy schedule, then says, “Yes, Monday works! We could meet here!”

I stand, nodding, brushing off my pants as I say, “Yes. I will meet you here. Monday evening. I’ll tell Mother I’m staying with a friend.” _What am I agreeing to?_

Merrill giggles. “And it will be true, won’t it?”

My shoulders drop three inches. “Yes. I suppose we are friends now, aren’t we?”

“I suppose we are.” Merrill’s grin buoys me back to Kirkwall.

 

**Author's Note:**

>  ~~Never trust someone who becomes your friend when you weren’t looking.~~  
>  I recognize the horror of displaying people for the entertainment of the masses. I got the idea from the Victorian practice of displaying the mentally ill in ways that are more explicitly degrading. I first learned about the practice from the play The Insanity of Mary Girard. It is in no way acceptable, in any universe.


End file.
